That got the response it deserved! Nothing. But she

felt better. She felt considerably better when Coromell ;: returned very shortly to report that the program had

--:.   none of the expected microdots.

“I find myself annoyed with your Zebara,” he said, dapping the program down on the table between them. **If there’s a message in this thing, no one’s found it yet.

·        Do you have any idea how many little specks there are / in an opera program? Every single person credited with

anything in the production has a row of them, and we

had to check every one.” “But it has to be this,” said Lunzie. She picked up

the program, and flipped through it. She still thought

·        the cover design looked pretentious. Even with heavy-:   worlder pride at full blast on this thing, she noticed that .K the opera had needed corporate sponsorship. The ads ;    covered the inside front and back pages. Then came photographs of the lead singers, then scenes from the opera itself, then the outline of the libretto, and the east list. More photographs, an interview with the conductor. She realized she was reading the Diplo dialect

·        . much better than she ever had. It almost seemed natu-:,f”; «1. She found herself humming the aria of the suicide y who refused to eat even re-synthesized meat. Coromell

-:  looked at her oddly.

“I don’t know ...” she said. She didn’t want to speak

|r Standard! She wanted to sing! Sing? Something flut-

,^, tered in her mind like great feathered wings and the

“fvf1”•= tlternative slang meaning of “sing” popped up, along

j;if with the anagram “sign.” Suddenly she knew. “Sing a

|^»ng of sixpence . . . sing a sign . . . good heavens, that

Ji^jnan is so devious a corkscrew would get lost in him.”

I;!;    “What!” Coromell fairly barked at her, his patience

| ;gt»e, looking now very like his boisterously bossy father.

^;l     “It’s here, but it’s . . . it’s in my head. It’s a key . . .

£ «n implant, keyed to this program. I think . . . Just be

.$*. patient!”

She looked a bit longer, let her mind drift with the forces. Zebara had known she was a Disciple. had eased his pain, she had touched his mind just a and his heart somewhat more. She looked on the program, not knowing exactly what she was

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